


hope you're well

by two_drama_nerds_in_a_boat



Category: Lumberjanes
Genre: Angst, Boarding School, F/F, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Molly-centric, NO FLUFF FOR YOU, only angst, post-camp
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-07
Updated: 2020-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:40:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23057104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/two_drama_nerds_in_a_boat/pseuds/two_drama_nerds_in_a_boat
Summary: There is a sense of numbness, as Molly has to leave camp.It’s like the world’s been muted. The wind is silent against her face, the giggle of the nearby stream is gone, though she knows it should be there. She cannot hear the birds as they fly and call back and forth to their loved ones. She can barely comprehend the words Mal whispers in her ear, hugging Molly tight before she has to go back home to her parents.(Previously titled 'green.')
Relationships: Mal/Molly (Lumberjanes)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 31





	1. Part I - Leaving

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was trying to write a fluffy Mally story and this happened.

_This is erosion. Grinding up rocks with your molars. A big fish swims past your rod, you can’t catch it, it’s far too fast._

* * *

There is a sense of numbness, as Molly has to leave camp. 

It’s like the world’s been muted. The wind is silent against her face, the giggle of the nearby stream is gone, though she knows it should be there. She cannot hear the birds as they fly and call back and forth to their loved ones. She can barely comprehend the words Mal whispers in her ear, hugging Molly tight before she has to go back home to her parents. 

_I love you. I’ll always remember you. I’ll find you again._

And then Mal shoves a folded piece of paper into her hand, and Molly steps away to pocket it.

Mal’s crying. She’s never been one to hide how she feels, and she always feels so strongly. Molly doesn’t cry at all. She’s not sure she even frowns. Later, when she sees her reflection in the car window, she sees herself the way Mal saw her. 

Blank. Empty. Like a stranger, except for the eyes. In her eyes she sees the sorrow, though even Molly can barely comprehend it, in the moment. Because right now, she just felt numb. 

When Molly was younger, she found a book in the school library about how the brain stores memories. The truth is that the brain often only tries to store information that it thinks will be useful to you, later on. This is why we mostly remember the saddest or scariest parts of our life - because if it is useful, you hold onto it, in the hopes that this knowledge will save you in the future. Make you more careful. But there’s also a part of the brain that censors these memories - it hides from you the hardest parts, the worst ones. When you’re in fight or flight mode, your brain has a harder time putting things in your long-term memory. 

Molly always thought, when she first read this, that it was weird how these two facts just so nearly conflicted with each other, and she came to the conclusion that we really just don’t understand how the brain works at all. But now, she’s remembering these two conflicting facts, and she’s praying to whoever’s listening that she remembers the every day of camp perfectly, except for this one. 

It’s a shorter drive home than she remembers. It’s quiet. Her parents don’t listen to the radio - they never do. And now, for the first time in her life, she’s somewhat grateful for this. She knows that music would only remind her of Mal. 

_Mal._

The numbness is still there, the grief hasn’t quite set in, yet. But thinking about Mal… 

It makes her feel something. It’s not happiness, not that. Maybe it’s shock. 

Who would have thought leaving a summer camp could be so distressful? 

Molly doesn’t cry in the car. And she doesn’t cry as they pull into her driveway, as she pulls her luggage out of the trunk, dragging up the front steps. She doesn’t cry as she steps into her house, too big for her, to clean and bright, too unlike the cabin she was so used to sleeping in with the other Roanokes. 

She walks into the house and straight to her room, without really speaking to her parents. They’ve never spoken that much, so no one finds anything odd in this. It’s just the way things are. 

Molly doesn’t let herself cry until she’s dumped her bags in her closet and shut her door (not all the way, of course - her parents always request it to be open at least a crack) and collapsed onto her too-large bed, not even bothering to take off her shoes. 

She closes her eyes, though it doesn’t do much. Tears have a way of evading our ever-futile attempts to hide them. She breathes in the scent of her sheets, to find them just the way they were when she left. For some reason she can’t explain, this only makes her want to cry harder. Though Molly isn’t able to acknowledge it, through all of the tears and emotions and loss she’s feeling, there was a part of her that expected her bedroom to feel like home. 

And home, to her, has never been this place. 

Home is the sunlight warm on her skin, and the other ‘janes calling her name in the distance, conversing amongst each other about badges and best friends and mythical beasts. Home is running through the forest, solving mysteries, hanging out with her friends in Roanoke Cabin. 

Mostly, home is Mal. 

And though she knows it’s ridiculous, she feels as though she can barely remember a time without Mal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *plays rick astley's 'never gonna give you up' in the hopes of lightening the mood*


	2. Part II - School

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> listen ok I promise I was trying to write fluff at some point here.

_ Big hook marks in rubber lips. I see your eyes in the flowers. I’ll pick a bunch for your room. Green and blue to match your pictures.  _

* * *

School is hell. 

Molly loves learning, but she hates school. It’s mostly the pressure her parents put on her - she’s always been expected to good grades, participate in the right extracurriculars, make the right connections (her parents try not to use the word ‘friends’ - it’s too dangerous a term), be well-rounded and polite and athletic, too. They want the whole package, and a pretty little bow on the top. 

Nothing’s changed, of course. 

Well, actually, that’s a lie - Molly’s changed, and she’s the most important part of the equation, so you can imagine how difficult this all is. 

She thinks of camp, sometimes, though she tries to put it out of her mind. She sees it as chasing after something she can never get. She has a box, unlabeled, and she keeps it in her closet. Inside are all of her camp memories - photos and keepsakes, some of Ripley’s drawings, some of Jen’s star charts. A few notes written by Jo and April. A bunch of stuff from Mal. 

Molly looks in the box when she’s feeling particularly sad, in the hopes that it will cheer her up. 

Sometimes it does. 

She’s shipped off to a boarding school as soon as September gives it’s lazy yawn in her direction. 

There’s a joke they have, at her school - they like to say you don’t end up there unless you hate your parents, or your parents hate you, or you’re some form of LGBT+. 

Molly finds the joke hilarious, mostly because she checks all three of the boxes. 

The social part of school is actually a lifesaver. She finds herself loving boarding school. The dorm is small, and she has her own small bunk and a lovely little bookshelf she soon fills with her favorite mythology collections, and a portion of wall she can decorate to her heart’s content, without worry of anyone reprimanding her. It reminds her so much of camp, and she feels so much at home. Her roommate is kind. 

Her parents… well, they’re not cruel. They keep in touch, from a distance, so it feels exactly the same as when she’s living in the same house as them. They do yell at her when her grades are insufficient. They try to punish her when they find out she’s joined the school GSA. Thankfully, the student dean stops them from doing anything too irrational. It’s not a horrible existence. Molly’s fine. 

She has her little box of camp memories. She looks at it more when she’s at school, mostly because she can. She never pins any of the photos up, or wears any of Mal’s clothing - it feels sacrilegious. Or dangerous. She knows it’s ridiculous, but there’s a part of her that truly believes that if she looks upon these things too often, they’ll disintegrate before her eyes, or vanish into thin air, or just altogether cease to exist. But she looks at them, sometimes. Her roommate asks about it, and Molly tells her. It feels nice to talk to an outsider about this, for once. 

“We were Lumberjanes,” she says. 

“Like Girl Scouts?” Asks her roommate. 

“Girl Scouts who fight monsters,” says Molly with a grin, and her roommate laughs. It’s a kind hearted laugh - the laugh of a friend. 

“Real monsters?”   
  
“Of course,” says Molly. 

Sometimes it feels like the monsters were the only part that were real. 

She thinks, late at night, that everything else was too good to be true. April and Jo and Ripley and Jen. Hell, even Rosie. Even the Bear Woman - though after some time, of course, they all started calling her Nellie. Even Mal, though she knows she could never have imagined someone as amazing and clever and talented and kind and beautiful and wonderful as Mal. 

She remembers what Mal said the day they all left camp. 

_ I love you. I’ll always remember you. I’ll find you again.  _

A sort of twitching, in the back of Molly’s mind. Mal did something else that day, when they hugged their last goodbye.

_ I’ll find you again.  _

A scribble of pen. A crinkling sound. Something slipped into her hand.

_ I’ll find you again. _

A scrap of paper with a phone number on it.

How had she ever forgotten about it? 

Molly sits up in her bed, feeling a cold sweat all over. She’s in her dorm. Her roommate’s sleeping on the other side of the room. She tells herself she’s safe. 

She tells herself she’s missing something. 

She tells herself to look inside the box. 

And there it is, slightly hidden amongst everything else, nestled beneath a few old arts-and-crafts projects, pressed gently in-between the pages of her beat-up Scout’s Handbook. 

A phone number. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> is this angst?? yes. do I regret anything??? maybe, but that's none of your business.


	3. Part III - Number

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm fixing it don't worry.

_ You looked so good in green. I hope you’re well.  _

* * *

Molly’s parents track her calls - or at least, they say the do, and Molly’s not currently one for taking chances - so she borrows her roommate's phone to make the call. 

Her fingers shake as she types in the number, and she finds herself thinking about every way this could go wrong. She never learned where Mal lives - what if it’s a completely different time zone? What if she’s halfway across the world? What if Mal sees an unknown caller and just completely blocks the number? 

What if she picks up, and she tells Molly she’s found someone else?    
  


Molly tells herself it’s more than likely. What she and Mal had was a summer fling, surely, and though it was beautiful and sweet and the best thing in Molly’s world, that’s all Mal sees it as. 

Right? 

The dial tone stops abruptly in the middle of it’s mundane sequence, and there’s a voice at the other end. 

“This is Mal Yoo on bass. If this is Alice the answer is still no, if you’re Craig I have the data from the lab we did in chem, I’ll email it to you, and-”

Molly has to stop herself from crying. Then, she has to stop herself from laughing. Then, she has to stop herself from jumping up and down and shouting with joy. She settles on gasp, though she doesn’t mean to.

And then, she says, “Mal? Is it really you?”

  
And there’s this quiet, quick intake of breath on the other end. “Molly?”

And then there’s a silence on the line. A comfortable kind of silence. It settles over the two of them like a childhood blanket. It’s warm. Welcoming. 

“I’m sorry it took me so long to call you,” Molly says, suddenly feeling horrible. “I’ve missed you so much, I wanted to say something to you but… well, life got in the way, and I’m at boarding school now and there are so many things I need to tell you about, and…” 

  
Molly can hear the smile in Mal’s voice as she says, “I missed you too.” 

They talk about everything.    
  
“I brought all of my mythology books to school with me,” says Molly. 

“Of course you did. They’re all you read.”    
  
“I’ve started making corrections in them, you know.”    
  
“Oh really?” There’s a playful side to Mal’s voice here, a sound Molly didn’t realize she missed until just now. 

“I’ve added a  _ lot  _ to my chapters on Artemis.”   
  
And, 

“Is Bubbles doing well?”   
  
“He’s perfect, I promise. He went home with Ripley when camp ended. We knew he wouldn’t be able to go home with you.”    
  
And, 

“Jo and April are dating, now.”    
  
Molly has to suppress a laugh. “Like they weren’t before?”   
  
“I don’t think they realized they were dating until Jo’s dads said they were dating.”    
  
“Dang.”   
  
“Yeah.” 

“And Jo’s going to one of those fancy science schools, and she’s prepping for a Mars mission, I think.”    
  
And, 

“Boarding school?”   
  
“Yeah.”    
  
“Where?”

Molly tells her. 

And then Mal says, after some clicking that must have been her looking it up on the computer, “That’s a short drive from where I live!”   
  
“Really?”   
  
“Yeah! Just a day trip, at most.” 

And then,    
  
“I’m free next weekend, and my mom says I can borrow the car.”    
  
“I’ll see you then.”

  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you can have a little (vaguely) happy ending. as a treat.


End file.
